Far far fewer people in immigration detention in Australia

As unpopular as they are with some people, there is no doubt the Coalition’s turn back the boats policy has led to a massive reduction in both drownings at sea, and also in the numbers of people held in immigration detention.

So the number in detention has fallen from 13,000 under Labor to just over 2,000 under the Coalition.

And the number of children in detention is now zero, down from 2,000 under Labor.

Since 2013 not a single person has drowned at sea while trying to reach Australia.

Under the previous Labor Government a massive 1,138 people drowned.

The simple fact is the hardline policy has worked – it has reduced drownings and massively reduced the numbers in detention. The lesson is that putting the people smugglers out of business was in fact the most humane policy.

Captain Mainwaring

The lesson is that putting the people smugglers out of business was in fact the most humane policy.

That is a judgement call. Others who don’t think this end justifies those means may have a different opinion.

And accepting everyone into Australia would have been more humane than imprisoning them has been, so obviously humanity wasn’t the yardstick the policy was intended to be judged by.

It has been effective at deterrence, but so would shooting all the boat people have been. It’s a choice where on the spectrum of all things that might have been done where one finds an acceptable trade off between deterrence and humanity.

davidp

Steve Wrathall

Fentex:
“accepting everyone into Australia would have been more humane”. Incentivising queue-jumpers to pay thousands to people-smugglers, and risk dangerous voyages resulting in thousands of deaths is “humane” is it?

If there were a neighbourhood watch group in this part of the world, Australia would be the neighbour the group had to watch. It is rich and large, rude and loud, and doesn’t seem to care that its behaviour brings the region down.

Our government has managed to infuriate most nearby countries in some way or other. Some have to deal with the consequences of our peculiar, unjustified obsessions with refugees and dole bludgers.

One, the youngest, smallest and poorest nation in Asia, has to cop rampant Australian greed for its mineral wealth.

Australia has behaved scandalously towards East Timor. It behaves selfishly towards New Zealand. Highhandedly towards its former colony, Papua New Guinea. It acts towards tiny Nauru as if it is a shameful illegitimate child, to be paid off to do our dirty work, running a refugee gulag hidden from view.